Hősök kultusza: Színházi és filmes emlékezet a romániai magyar kultúrában 1945-1975 között

The Cult of Heroes examines how state socialism in Romania used the cult of heroes to shape, influence and direct cultural and collective memory between 1945 and 1975. The book's central thesis is that political power sought to construct an image of the past that corresponded to its own ideological objectives by reinterpreting history, selecting heroic figures and establishing their cults.
The research focuses primarily on Hungarian theatrical culture in Romania, particularly the productions of the Székely State Theatre in Târgu Mureș, as well as Romanian film production during the period under examination. The book explores how, between 1948 and 1953, the institutional boundaries between professional and amateur theatre became increasingly blurred, how the new heroes of socialist society appeared on stage, and how historical dramas served the official ideology of fraternal Romanian–Hungarian coexistence.
Separate chapters analyse the Ady commemorations of 1957, the development of the Bolyai cult in Târgu Mureș, and the theatrical representations of historical dramas written by Gyula Illyés, Ágoston Horváth and Károly Kós. Drawing on Pierre Nora's theory of lieux de mémoire (sites of memory), the book argues that heroes, theatrical performances and commemorative celebrations can themselves become sites of memory.
The cinematic analysis traces how the worker and peasant heroes of the 1950s were transformed into national heroes and figures of leadership in the monumental historical films of the 1960s and 1970s. Through an examination of the visual representation of the deaths of eight cinematic heroes, the book also investigates the relationship between cinematic language and ideological representation.
One of the research's most significant conclusions, based on contemporary press materials, archival documents, sources on theatre history and film analyses, is that despite the changing political orientations of the period, the cult of heroes repeatedly returned to the ideological models of the 1950s. Thus, theatre and cinema did not merely represent the past but actively participated in rewriting it, shaping collective memory and legitimising political power.